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Mark Kirk campaign ad makes false claim about his military service

Rep. Mark Kirk, the GOP candidate for the Senate seat once held by President Obama, misrepresented his military record as recently as last summer, according to a Web video for Kirk's campaign that resurfaced Tuesday.

"The Navy named Mark Intelligence Officer of the Year for his combat service in Kosovo," the narrator of the two-minute video says, while photos of Kirk in military attire scroll in the background.

Kirk, whose Illinois Senate campaign has emphasized his service in the Navy Reserves, acknowledged last week that he did not receive the award, despite a claim in his official biography and his own statements in a 2002 House committee hearing. A unit Kirk led in Aviano, Italy, received an award from the National Military Intelligence Association for outstanding service in 2000.

Kirk is facing a competitive battle against Illinois Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias (D) for the Senate seat. Kirk's recent misrepresentations of his service come in the wake of a recent controversy surrounding another U.S. Senate candidate, Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal (D), who has acknowledged misstating his own military service during the Vietnam war.

It's one thing if the mistake happened once on a website and it was corrected immediately upon discovery. I get that. Things happen. But Mr. Kirk had an entire ad centered around the wrong information, which he absolutely cannot claim he didn't see, and that takes it out of the realm of mistake into that of deliberate misrepresentation, or what those not in politics call a lie.

I'm curious if the media will give this as much attention as the Blumenthal hullabaloo.

Kirk is just a typical Republican, indifferent to lying. What could anyone expect of people who insist in believing things that aren't true. Cutting taxes increases revenue, Saddam planned 9/11 and had WMDs, deregulation works, global warming is a myth, Obama a Kenyan, Palin has brains, Reagan was great, and so and and so on.

There's a reason why Republicans have lower than dirt poll numbers even though they're out of power right now. They continue to lie and be deceitful just like they did during the Bush years, they only care about their own political behinds and not the American citizens.

The most shocking thing about this is that Kirk clearly knew he didn't win these awards. This wasn't even misspeaking, this was outright lying.

But we already knew what a person of lowly character Mark Kirk is, seeing as how he also has a treason problem.

37thandO- Blumenthal lied and should have resigned. Kirk tried to steal an award given to someone else. They were both wrong and only those blinded by partisan agendas could deny that.

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"We just let him know that you, the media, were asking questions about who the Intelligence Officer of the Year was," Cmdr. Danny Hernandez told the Tribune. "We let him know that there was an individual who was named reserve intelligence officer of the year."

Furthermore Plazawrongnumber-
(From Wikipedia)
A Deep Submergence Vehicle (DSV) is a deep diving manned submarines that is self-propelled. The term DSV is generally one used by the United States Navy, though several navies operate vehicles that can be accurately described as DSVs. DSVs are commonly divided into two types: research DSVs, which are used for exploration and surveying, and DSRVs (Deep Submergence Rescue Vehicle), which can be used for rescuing the crew of a sunken submarine and/or clandestine (espionage) missions (primarily installing wiretaps on undersea cables). DSRV type vessels are equipped with docking chambers to allow personnel ingress/egress via a manhole.
In a DSV/DSRV type vehicle the passenger compartment and the ballast tank functionality is incorporated into a single structure to afford more habitable space (up to 24 people in the case of a DSRV rescue vehicle).
Most DSV/DSRV vehicles are powered by traditional electric battery propulsion and have very limited endurance. Plans have been made to equip DSVs with closed circuit internal combustion powerplants (LOX Stirling engines) but none have been realized so far, due to cost and maintenance considerations. All DSV vehicles are dependent upon a surface support ship or a mother submarine, that can piggyback or tow them (in case of the NR-1) to the scene of operations. Some DSRV vessels are air transportable in very large military cargo planes to speed up deployment in case of emergency rescue missions.

"A small submarine, the bathyscape Trieste, made it to 10,916 meters (35,813 feet) below sea level in the deepest point in the ocean, the Challenger Deep in the Marianas Trench, a few hundred miles east of the Philippines. This part of the ocean is 11,034 m (36,200 ft) deep, so it seems that a submarine can make it as deep as it's theoretically possible to go. The water pressure at this depth is over 1000 atmospheres. Life does exist here, as well as a carpet of diatomaceous material that covers all the ocean floors of the world.

Trieste was manned by two people and funded by the United States Navy."

Hey Mr. President-
Are you commander in chief?
Over the Navy too?
Still funding and staffing SUBMARINES?
Do you think it's worth a few million funding an attempt at using them to close this leak?

No....I guess this weekend is better spent in Chicago "Brainstorming" over SESTAKgate while our environment goes to hell over a leaking deep sea well approved by your inept administration!

In November, the oil will hopefully have stopped flowing onto the Gulf Coast, Florida Keys, Virginia Beach, and the Hamptons, and we'll give those suffering a lot of relief in the form of cash and a new Congress- THEN in 2012- a one term community organizer will be back in his community- oh, what a relief that will be for our great country.

... the Navy has manned submarines that dive 7 times the needed depth..."

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LOL! Talk about over inflating things.

The needed depth is 5000 ft. No sub's exist that can dive to 35000 feet. US Navy has never had the need to dive to the bottom of the Mariana Trench. 'Trieste' (Swiss designed bathyscaphe-on display in the U.S. Navy Museum) got there once in 1960... ROV's Kaikō and Nereus also.

Deep diving US Navy Research sub NR-1 could only go to about 2800ft, but it was retired in November 2008. Boomers don't go that deep, and since they don't, attack subs don't either.

Kirk's lies are leaps and bounds above Blumenthal's. Saying you served in 'nam when you only served in the Guard is one thing. Saying you served in Iraq when your two-week annual training happened to take place during the war is another thing entirely. Claiming you received an award from the Navy when that award doesn't even exist is another thing entirely.

Ironically, Orrin Hatch of Utah recently proposed a bill making it a crime to lie about military service. Wonder what his opinion of Kirk is now. Or maybe it's okay because he's Republican?

Politicians who inflate their resume? How about The Robocop President? Didn't he claim to be competent?-

Let's see- the biggest environmental catastrophe in US history- caused by a well Obama's administration approved and didn't oversee properly- and we have a private company trying to fix it with robots, when the Navy has manned submarines that dive 7 times the needed depth.... hmmmm of what does that remind you? A Bad movie perhaps? The Robocop President- Does Obama think picking up tar balls on the beach is going to cut it?- He should try spitting into the wind while, according to the Pew Research Foundation, 82% of Americans are paying close attention and a British run Private company runs the show! What is this ROBOCOP?- where Detroit privatized the Police Force?

"The bottom line is that Kirk's been claiming an individual, Navy-wide award that does not exist. He's been claiming it for almost a decade, verbally and in writing; in person and by written communication. He's taken accolades for it at public events and announced it in House committee. It doesn't exist"

"Once he got caught, he sought cover. His only cover was the Rufus Taylor Award given to an Air Wing of which his Squadron was a small part. It's an award given by a private organization dedicated to facilitating the connection between the military and private contractors. There is simply no way this was just a mistake."

Kirk has no business holding public office anymore. He needs to resign.

Kirk has had to walk his military resume back twice already. It is virtually all he can claim as an accomplishment (beyond voting for cap and trade then promising to vote against it in the Senate). The man is an untrustworthy weasel.

Kirk's military exaggerations go way beyond Blumenthal misstating "during" versus "in" once in 2008 - this is a pattern of exaggeration and overselling his qualifications from his first campaign ad for Congress to the present day. Kirk basically introduced himself to the wider Illinois electorate with a series of lies. He went hard right on issues from his prior positions in the GOP primary, and he's done his best to not say anything on the issues since. So if the lies are revealed, he quite literally will have nothing to say to the general populace.